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High-frequency trading — the questionable practice of making thousands of algorithmic stock trades per minute — is about to get a big boost in the USA. Anova, a company that specializes in deploying low-latency networks for stock trading, is completing an ultra-high-speed laser network between the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the NASDAQ. The link will be just a few nanoseconds faster than the current microwave and fiber-optic links — but in the world of high-frequency trading (HFT), those nanoseconds will result in billions of dollars in profits for the trading companies. Such is the insanity of the stock markets; such is the unbelievable capacity of HFT to create money out of almost nothing.

If you thought that stock traders made enough money, and wielded enough power over the global economy, think again: Financial traders are now turning to high-speed laser networks between stock exchanges, to decrease latency by a few milliseconds, to squeeze a few more trillion dollars per year out of high-frequency trading (HFT).

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